IRS computer hack was worse than agency admitted

The IRS’s computer hack was worse than previously admitted, and the tax agency failed to alert thousands of people that their information was stolen, and didn’t give credit monitoring assistance to nearly 80,000 others who were targeted, an inspector general said Wednesday.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration says nearly 1 million accounts were potentially targeted, and nearly 360,000 people actually had their accounts broken into. That’s far more than the 220,000 hacks the tax agency initially acknowledged.

In thousands of instances, the IRS missed the signs of a hack, the inspector general said.

“While the IRS acted swiftly to disable its application upon learning of the data breach, our auditors found that it did not identify all taxpayers who were potentially affected, and whose tax information was at risk of being used by unauthorized individuals,” said J. Russell George, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

He said the IRS did notify the taxpayers after the inspector general pointed out the botch.

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